Downsizing through attrition — it’s a bad idea.

A wide range of organ­i­sa­tions have been inves­ti­gat­ing down­siz­ing their work­force. It’s that part of the cycle. There are a great num­ber of ways to down­size, and one which is prone to over-use is down­siz­ing through attrition.

Down­siz­ing through attri­tion is easy. There are no dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions or upset employ­ees. You don’t have to make dif­fi­cult choices as to who goes and who stays. All the deci­sions are made for you, and you just have to sit back and enjoy the ride.

It’s not all that rosy, though. When you wait for nat­ural attri­tion to cull your staff, you open your organ­i­sa­tion up to a few prob­lems. Firstly, you don’t plan the down­size. Staff leave, and posi­tions are not kept. This means you don’t get to pick which areas of the busi­ness loses staff – you take what you get. In addi­tion, when down­siz­ing is needed, it really needs to be done imme­di­ately. Wait­ing for staff to decide to leave is cost­ing you dearly.

When com­pa­nies adopt this strat­egy, they also tend to unwit­tingly change man­age­r­ial cul­ture. When you need staff to leave, the ten­dency is to sub­con­ciously value them less, or even out­right try to get them to leave. This means you may end up los­ing good employ­ees, rather than not so good ones.

There are ways to down­size through attri­tion, but it needs to be done care­fully and in a very con­trolled man­ner. For most com­pa­nies, it’s best to just bite the bullet.